自噬与肿瘤关系的研究与进展

自噬是一个高度发达而且十分保守的生物学分解代谢过程。自噬与肿瘤的关系十分密切,在肿瘤发生发展的过程中,自噬活性的改变却是一把双刃剑。自噬,它既能够使肿瘤细胞耐受不同的应激条件而使其获得更好的生存,也可以通过各种信号途径减轻许多不良应激条件下的细胞损伤,如慢性炎症、慢性细胞死亡及基因组损伤等,从而而减少肿瘤的发生。再者,一方面,某些肿瘤的发生和发展过程中也同样依赖于自噬,并且肿瘤细胞可以利用自噬来对抗抗癌药物的一定的细胞毒性。而另一方面,有些癌症却需要利用自噬的作用来杀死肿瘤细胞。虽然自噬与肿瘤的关系是十分复杂的,也存在不少的分歧,但总的来说自噬在癌症中的作用是至关重要的。结合近年来国内外研究的发展,我们这篇综述重点讨论的是自噬在癌症中的作用,并且探讨其潜在的作用机制,以及目前自噬在癌症治疗中的应用。     

Autophagy: a barrier or an adaptive response to cancer

Macroautophagy or autophagy is a degradative pathway terminating in the lysosomal compartment after the formation of a cytoplasmic vacuole that engulfs macromolecules and organelles. The recent discovery of the molecular controls of autophagy that are common to eukaryotic cells from yeast to human suggests that the role of autophagy in cell functioning is far beyond its nonselective degradative capacity. The involvement of proteins with properties of tumor suppressor and oncogenic properties at different steps of the pathway implies that autophagy must be considered in tumor progression. Autophagy as a stress response mechanism protects cancer cells from low nutrient supply or therapeutic insults. Autophagy is also involved in the elimination of cancer cells by triggering a non-apoptotic cell death program, suggesting a negative role in tumor development. These two aspects of autophagy will be discussed in this review.     

Autophagy and cancer

Autophagy is a homeostatic and evolutionarily conserved mechanism of self-digestion by which the cells degrade and recycle long-lived proteins and excess or damaged organelles.Autophagy is activated in response to both physiological and pathological stimuli including growth factor depletion,energy deficiency or the upregulation of Bcl-2 protein expression.A novel role of autophagy in various cancers has been proposed.Interestingly,evidence that supports both a positive and negative role of autophagy in the pathogenesis of cancer has been reported.As a tumor suppression mechanism,autophagy maintains genome stability,induces senescence and possibly autophagic cell death.On the other hand,autophagy participates in tumor growth and maintenance by supplying metabolic substrate,limiting oxidative stress,and maintaining cancer stem cell population.It has been proposed that the differential roles of autophagy in cancer are disease type and stage specific.In addition,substrate selectivity might be involved in carrying out the specific effect of autophagy in cancer,and represents one of the potential directions for future studies.     

Autophagy and tumorigenesis

Autophagy, or cellular self-digestion, is activated in cancer cells in response to multiple stresses and has been demonstrated to promote tumor cell survival and drug resistance. Nonetheless, genetic evidence supports that autophagy functions as a tumor suppressor mechanism. Hence, the precise role of autophagy during cancer progression and treatment is both tissue and context dependent. Here, we discuss our current understanding of the biological functions of autophagy during cancer development, overview how autophagy is regulated by cancer-associated signaling pathways, and review how autophagy inhibition is being exploited to improve clinical outcomes.     

Strange attractors: DAMPs and autophagy link tumor cell death and immunity

Resistance to ‘apoptotic'' cell death is one of the major hallmarks of cancer, contributing to tumor development and therapeutic resistance. Damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) are molecules released or exposed by dead, dying, injured, or stressed non-apoptotic cells, with multiple roles in inflammation and immunity. Release of DAMPs not only contributes to tumor growth and progression but also mediates skewing of antitumor immunity during so-called immunogenic tumor cell death (ICD). Autophagy is a lysosome-mediated homeostatic degradation process in which cells digest their own effete organelles and macromolecules to meet bioenergetic needs and enable protein synthesis. For tumor cells, autophagy is a double-edged sword. Autophagy, in balance with apoptosis, can function as a tumor suppressor; autophagy deficiency, associated with alterations in apoptosis, initiates tumorigenesis in many settings. In contrast, autophagy-related stress tolerance generally promotes cell survival, which enables tumor growth and promotes therapeutic resistance. Most anticancer therapies promote DAMP release and enhance autophagy. Autophagy not only regulates DAMP release and degradation, but also is triggered and regulated by DAMPs. This interplay between autophagy and DAMPs, serving as ‘strange attractors'' in the dynamic system that emerges in cancer, regulates the effectiveness of antitumor treatment. This interplay also shapes the immune response to dying cells upon ICD, culling the least fit tumor cells and promoting survival of others. Thus, DAMPs and autophagy are suitable emergent targets for cancer therapy, considering their more nuanced role in tumor progression.     

Autophagy and EMT in cancer and metastasis: Who controls whom?

Metastasis consists of hallmark events, including Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT), angiogenesis, initiation of inflammatory tumor microenvironment, and malfunctions in apoptosis. Autophagy is known to play a pivotal role in the metastatic process. Autophagy has pulled researchers towards it in recent times because of its dual role in the maintenance of cancer cells. Evidence states that cells undergoing EMT need autophagy in order to survive during migration and dissemination. Additionally, it orchestrates EMT markers in certain cancers. On the other side of the coin, autophagy plays an oncosuppressive role in impeding early metastasis. This review aims to project the interrelationship between autophagy and EMT. Targeting EMT via autophagy as a useful strategy is discussed in this review. Furthermore, for the first time, we have covered the possible reciprocating roles of EMT and autophagy and its consequences in cancer metastasis.     

TMEPAI increases lysosome stability and promotes autophagy

Autophagy is emerging as a critical response of normal and cancer cells to environmental changes and plays an important role in cell metabolism and maintenance of damaged organelles. Transmembrane prostate androgen-induced protein (TMEPAI) is a pro-tumorigenic factor with high expression in tumor cells. In this study, we showed that depletion of TMEPAI leads to lysosomal labilization and inhibits autophagy. Further study showed that the inhibition of autophagy induced by the depletion of TMEPAI is involved in regulation of Beclin-1. Depletion of TMEPAI increases the sensitivity of cancer cells to chemotherapeutic drugs. Our study reveals the role of TMEPAI in promoting lysosome stability and autophagy, which might be used as a target for cancer chemotherapeutic treatment.     

细胞自噬与肿瘤耐药

细胞自噬是一种细胞自我降解的过程,在适应代谢应激、保持基因组完整性及维持内环境稳定方面发挥重要作用. 在肿瘤治疗中,凋亡耐受是产生肿瘤耐药的重要机制. 细胞自噬可防止抗肿瘤药诱导的凋亡,促进肿瘤耐药. 然而,自噬性细胞死亡可能是凋亡耐受肿瘤细胞的一种死亡方式. 因此,细胞自噬对肿瘤细胞的耐药性有双重影响. 本文综述了细胞自噬的分子机制、细胞自噬与凋亡的关系、细胞自噬与肿瘤耐药以及治疗的主要研究进展.     

p53, Autophagy and Tumor Suppression

Autophagy was recently established as a novel tumor suppression mechanism, which stimulated a wave of investigations that were aimed at understanding exactly how autophagy prevents tumorigenesis, as well as to determine to what extent autophagy is implicated in human cancers. Autophagy might exert its tumor suppression function at the subcellular level by removing defective cytoplasmic components, such as damaged mitochondria. In addition, it might function at the cellular level by helping in the orderly removal of damaged cells. Previous studies indicated that autophagy is compromised in human breast, ovarian and prostate cancers. Recent research revealed that autophagy is activated by p53, a critical tumor suppressor that is involved in most, if not all, tumorigenesis. This study places autophagy in a broader context of human cancers. Future work elucidating the role of autophagy in the p53 circuit and p53 function might provide more insight into tumorigenesis and targeted cancer chemotherapy.     

p53, Autophagy and tumor suppression

Autophagy was recently established as a novel tumor suppression mechanism, which stimulated a wave of investigations that were aimed at understanding exactly how autophagy prevents tumorigenesis, as well as to determine to what extent autophagy is implicated in human cancers. Autophagy might exert its tumor suppression function at the subcellular level by removing defective cytoplasmic components, such as damaged mitochondria. In addition, it might function at the cellular level by helping in the orderly removal of damaged cells. Previous studies indicated that autophagy is compromised in human breast, ovarian and prostate cancers. Recent research revealed that autophagy is activated by p53, a critical tumor suppressor that is involved in most, if not all, tumorigenesis. This study places autophagy in a broader context of human cancers. Future work elucidating the role of autophagy in the p53 circuit and p53 function might provide more insight into tumorigenesis and targeted cancer chemotherapy.     

Autophagy-mediated regulation of macrophages and its applications for cancer

Autophagy is a highly conserved homeostatic pathway that plays an important role in tumor development and progression by acting on cancer cells in a cell-autonomous mechanism. However, the solid tumor is not an island, but rather an ensemble performance that includes nonmalignant stromal cells, such as macrophages. A growing body of evidence indicates that autophagy is a key component of the innate immune response. In this review, we discuss the role of autophagy in the control of macrophage production at different stages (including hematopoietic stem cell maintenance, monocyte/macrophage migration, and monocyte differentiation into macrophages) and polarization and discuss how modulating autophagy in tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) may represent a promising strategy for limiting cancer growth and progression.     

Epigenetic regulation of autophagy: A key modification in cancer cells and cancer stem cells

Aberrant epigenetic alterations play a decisive role in cancer initiation and propagation via the regulation of key tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes or by modulation of essential signaling pathways. Autophagy is a highly regulated mechanism required for the recycling and degradation of surplus and damaged cytoplasmic constituents in a lysosome dependent manner. In cancer, autophagy has a divergent role. For instance, autophagy elicits tumor promoting functions by facilitating metabolic adaption and plasticity in cancer stem cells (CSCs) and cancer cells. Moreover, autophagy exerts pro-survival mechanisms to these cancerous cells by influencing survival, dormancy, immunosurveillance, invasion, metastasis, and resistance to anti-cancer therapies. In addition, recent studies have demonstrated that various tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes involved in autophagy, are tightly regulated via different epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, histone modifications and non-coding RNAs. The impact of epigenetic regulation of autophagy in cancer cells and CSCs is not well-understood. Therefore, uncovering the complex mechanism of epigenetic regulation of autophagy provides an opportunity to improve and discover novel cancer therapeutics. Subsequently, this would aid in improving clinical outcome for cancer patients. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of the existing knowledge available on epigenetic regulation of autophagy and its importance in the maintenance and homeostasis of CSCs and cancer cells.     

Role and regulation of autophagy in cancer

Autophagy is an intracellular self-degradative mechanism which responds to cellular conditions like stress or starvation and plays a key role in regulating cell metabolism, energy homeostasis, starvation adaptation, development and cell death. Numerous studies have stipulated the participation of autophagy in cancer, but the role of autophagy either as tumor suppressor or tumor promoter is not clearly understood. However, mechanisms by which autophagy promotes cancer involves a diverse range of modifications of autophagy associated proteins such as ATGs, Beclin-1, mTOR, p53, KRAS etc. and autophagy pathways like mTOR, PI3K, MAPK, EGFR, HIF and NFκB. Furthermore, several researches have highlighted a context-dependent, cell type and stage-dependent regulation of autophagy in cancer. Alongside this, the interaction between tumor cells and their microenvironment including hypoxia has a great potential in modulating autophagy response in favour to substantiate cancer cell metabolism, self-proliferation and metastasis. In this review article, we highlight the mechanism of autophagy and their contribution to cancer cell proliferation and development. In addition, we discuss about tumor microenvironment interaction and their consequence on selective autophagy pathways and the involvement of autophagy in various tumor types and their therapeutic interventions concentrated on exploiting autophagy as a potential target to improve cancer therapy.     

Oncogenic MAGEA-TRIM28 ubiquitin ligase downregulates autophagy by ubiquitinating and degrading AMPK in cancer

Autophagy is commonly altered in cancer and has a complicated, but important role in regulation of tumor growth. Autophagy is often tumor suppressive in the early stages of cancer development, but contributes to the late stages of tumor growth. Because of this, putative oncogenes that modulate autophagy signaling are especially interesting. Here we discuss our recent work detailing the function of the MAGEA-TRIM28 ubiquitin ligase as an oncogene product that targets PRKAA1/AMPKα1 for ubiquitination and proteasome-mediated degradation. Degradation of AMPK, a master cellular energy sensor and regulator, by MAGEA-TRIM28 results in significantly reduced autophagy and changes in cellular metabolism, including upregulation of MTOR signaling. Overall, expression of MAGEA3 (or MAGEA6) and degradation of AMPK is sufficient to induce transformation of normal cells and promote multiple hallmarks of cancer.     

肿瘤细胞的自噬和窖蛋白-1

自噬作用是一种细胞通过溶酶体自我降解的过程,在肿瘤的形成和发展中起着双重作用。窖蛋白-1(Caveolin-1,Cav-1)作为胞膜窖的标志蛋白,介导许多生理和病理过程,包括胞膜窖的形成、膜泡运输、维持细胞胆固醇稳态、信号转导和肿瘤的发生。近年来,许多研究表明肿瘤细胞自噬和Cav-1存在一定关系。文中就近年来肿瘤细胞的自噬与Cav-1的关系及其在肿瘤发生和发展过程中的作用进行综述。     

自噬抑制与肿瘤

自噬是一种在正常细胞和病理状态细胞中普遍存在的生理机制。自噬与肿瘤细胞的生存与凋亡关系密切,在很多肿瘤细胞中,其自噬活性均有改变。抑制肿瘤细胞中自噬活动可以促进肿瘤细胞的凋亡。在化疗诱导肿瘤细胞凋亡的同时,以自噬抑制剂抑制肿瘤细胞的自噬活动,可改善肿瘤的治疗效果。     

The role of autophagy in the metabolism and differentiation of stem cells

Autophagy is a very well-coordinated intracellular process that maintains cellular homeostasis under basal conditions by removing unnecessary or dysfunctional components through orderly degradation and recycling. Under pathological conditions, defects in autophagy have been linked to various human disorders, including neurodegenerative disorders and cancer. The role of autophagy in stem cell proliferation, differentiation, self-renewal, and senescence is well documented. Additionally, cancer stem cells (CSCs) play an important role in tumorigenesis, metastasis and tumor relapse and several studies have suggested the involvement of autophagy in the maintenance and invasiveness of CSCs. Hence, considering the modulation of autophagy in normal and cancer stems cells as a therapeutic approach can lead to the development or improvement of regenerative and anti-cancer therapies. Accordingly, modulation of autophagy can be regarded as a target for stem cell-based therapy of diseases with abnormal levels of autophagy.This article is focused on understanding the role of autophagy in stem cell homeostasis with an emphasis on the therapeutic potential of targeting autophagy for future therapies.     

A PINK1-mediated mitophagy pathway decides the fate of tumors—to be benign or malignant?

Macroautophagy/autophagy plays a dual role in cancer depending on the stage of tumorigenesis. Autophagy prevents tumor initiation by suppressing chronic tissue damage, inflammation, accumulation of damaged organelles and genome instability. Autophagy can also sustain tumor metabolism and provide nutrients for tumor growth and survival via nutrient recycling. Moreover, autophagy is required for benign tumors to progress to malignant tumors. Emerging evidence indicates that autophagy or mitophagy can inactivate tumor suppressors such as TP53/TRP53/p53 to promote tumor progression once carcinogenesis has been initiated.     

CCL2, survivin and autophagy: new links with implications in human cancer

Recent data strongly support the idea that the orchestrated interaction between cancer and other cells in the tumor microenvironment is a vital component in the neoplastic process. Thus, tumor cells take advantage of the signaling molecules of the immune system to proliferate, survive, and invade other tissues. CCL2 (Chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 2, Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) has been demonstrated to play a significant role in prostate cancer neoplasia and invasion, and is highly expressed in the tumor microenvironment. We recently reported that CCL2 elicits a strong survival advantage in prostate cancer PC3 cells through PI3K/Akt-dependent regulation of autophagy via the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway and importantly, survivin upregulation is essential in this survival mechanism. Autophagy protects cells from nutrient depletion stress, but, paradoxically, excessive autophagy will result in cell death. How these life or death decisions are regulated remains unclear. Here we discuss the function of survivin in the control of autophagy and the interaction between CCL2, survivin and autophagy in the complex program of tumor progression.